It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
Plus Steven Knight pens Bond & Script vs Novel Submissions
Kim Sherwood
Dear Reader,
A few things in this newsletter – returning to Hungary to say goodbye, news in the Bond world, and the difference between delivering a novel and delivering a script.
Back to Budapest
This week, we’re travelling to Hungary for my grandmother’s memorial. Marika was a Hungarian Jewish Holocaust Survivor. She left Budapest with her remaining family after the war and never moved back but always felt it was her true home. She asked us to scatter her ashes in the Danube.
Marika first took me to Hungary when I was fourteen and it became a home-away-from-home for me. Our family history inspired my first novel, Testament.
Writing the novel, I spent a lot of time in Budapest, researching in archives and museums, walking in my characters’ footsteps, sitting by the Danube. It’s a river that stirs my soul.
Anticipating the journey, I’ve been reading my travel diaries from that first trip with Marika in 2005, and in 2014 when I spent a month in the country. I don’t keep a regular diary, despite Tony Benn’s injunction that I should do so – he was a friend of my grandmother’s and told me that a) I should write everything down in a journal and b) I would change the world. Both of these seem like wise parting gifts to any teenager, but I took them to heart, and at least manage to keep a diary when I’m travelling. I’m grateful because it means I have a testament of that trip with Marika, which shaped so much of my identity and future.
So many things struck me reading my journal from ‘05. Little things like lunch made of salami and bread in squares and public gardens – still my favourite thing – and an abundance of cake and ice cream in cafés dating back to the nineteenth century – also my favourite thing. Marika took me to the apartment where she was born, the basement where she hid, her school. She spoke for the first time about the atrocities she had witnessed as a child. I wrote down all of our conversations about life, the universe and everything – reading over those pages, I can see my self forming.
There were two moments that came back like flashes of light in the dark. Here’s me at fourteen: ‘We sat on the steps by the banks of the river with the water splashing at our feet and the sun setting and I don’t think I have ever seen Marika look more beautiful. I think I’ll remember and treasure that sunset, and just the fact that I was there by the Danube with Marika, forever.’ That was our first day in the city. In the days to come, Marika took me up the steep funicular railway to the castle, pulled by cables. I was scared. Marika told me I should ‘never be afraid of anything – one in twenty people aren’t alright, and once every twenty years a cable snaps. If you happen to be on the cable that snaps, there is nothing you can do, so what is the point of being afraid?’ She told me she learnt that in the war – ‘if I did get bombed, there was nothing I could do, so what was the point of being afraid?’ There’s a good lesson from a Jewish grandma.
When I made my long stay there in 2014, my father, Craig, was also in Hungary. He was a production manager for rock ‘n’ roll bands and went wherever there was music. By serendipity, he was going to Sopron, a tiny border down, where I was also going because my grandmother’s uncle had been murdered on a forced march and buried there in a mass grave. We walked together through the woods and had ice cream from a roadside seller on a lonely picnic bench. It was one of the most significant moments in our relationship and since losing him a few weeks ago it’s something I’ve gone over and over.
Many of these events found their way, transliterated, into Testament. I was so proud to share the book with both Marika and Craig.
If you’d like to read about the locations in Testament, I wrote about my experiences for the brilliant Trip Fiction back in 2018 – check it out here.
Steven Knight set to write Bond
Lots of exciting news flying around the Bond world, from the appointment of Denis Villeneuve as the next director to Steven Knight as the new writer. I’m hugely excited and heartened by both. I wrote about why Knight is the perfect pick for The Conversation – check it out here.
Knight was asked what we can expect from his Bond and he said it will be ‘better, stronger and bolder.’ I should learn to say things like that.
Reaction to Hurricane Room
I’ve loved seeing the excitement for Hurricane Room, the final instalment of my Double O trilogy. The brilliant announcement video has racked up 10.6k views! And it was great to see this write-up from Ryan Britt in Men’s Journal, which had 30k views overnight! The headline probably helps… check it out here.
Pre-orders are the make or break of a book so if you haven’t yet, pre-order your copy now!
Thanks so much for all your support! For paying subscribers, read on to hear about the differences between delivering a novel and delivering a script…
girl with the golden pen is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
From Kim, With Love x ...